CenterBeam earns plaudit for keeping its customers satisfied
What is more annoying than calling an IT help line and being put on hold for hours? Or having your computer screen fade to black and the company tech guys are all off-site, putting out fires at a branch office?
Kevin Francis, president and chief executive officer of CentreBeam Inc., guarantees companies that buy his information technology service that they won't have to put up with those technology problems. And he's got the wall plaque to prove CenterBeam can do it.
Recently, the Canadian Innovation Productivity Awards (CIPA) named the Saint John branch of the San Jose, Calif.-based IT services company one of seven finalists in the category of "customer centricity".
The Bank of Montreal was named the top company by CIPA and Royal Bank placed second. Francis, as head of a small company barely eight years old, doesn't feel too badly about that.
"I was very excited to be in the company of the Royal Bank and the Bank of Montreal," said Francis in an interview from Toronto.
"This was our first year that we applied to participate. So to be selected as a finalist is a real tribute to the employees at CenterBeam. We were selected by a very distinguished panel of judges."
CIPA was created 15 years ago to recognize and showcase firms involved in Canada's IT professions. It receives entries for its awards from companies large and small in both for-profit and non-profit categories.
CenterBeam has just marked its fourth anniversary in Saint John. It rolled into town from the United States in December, 2003, and quickly built up a workforce of 140.
Francis, a native Cape Bretoner, once lived in Saint John. He took over CenterBeam in 2002 and set his sites on building a North American Solutions Center in the port city. As former chairman and CEO of Xerox Canada, he knew the community and he knew the reputation of the workforce here.
"I knew we could build a very good centre in Saint John," he said.
The 140 engineers, technicians and support staff who work for CenterBeam at CenterBeam Place, a restored historic site at 14 King St., provide front-line IT help services, known as Express Access, to companies in 45 countries. Other employees specialize in e-mail services, server engineering, networking services, technical operations and as desktop engineers.
CenterBeam has 150 customers - companies of 100 to 3,000 employees - that outsource their IT needs to CenterBeam. The Saint John office performs 140,000 to 150,000 operations daily, solving day-to-day computer glitches, managing and monitoring computers systems and providing data back-up services 24 hours a day.
"All of our laptops and desktops are backed up every day. So, if a laptop was stolen, you simply put in a call to CenterBeam, you purchase a new laptop, and we would download all your information, all your settings and all your mail as if you had never lost your machine," said Francis.
CenterBeam manages complex organizations from an aviation services company based in Dubai to a large hospital complex in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
The company entered the CIPA competition after making significant improvements to its customer satisfaction ratings.
Francis said they were already achieving a 95-per-cent approval rating from clients. He wanted to shoot for 100.
"We began a very comprehensive review of all of our processes, all of our training and, over a period of about 12 months, were were able to bring that from 95 per cent to 100 per cent. And we have been running at 100 per cent for nine consecutive months."
Customers are asked to respond to a survey, ranking the service they received. Ratings of satisfactory and very satisfactory were included to reach the score of 100 per cent. This past year, on a scale of one to nine, Francis said 70 per cent gave the service a perfect score.
The CEO attributes CenterBeam's success to a talented and well trained team of engineers in the Saint John office who relate well to customers and who respond quickly to a clients' needs.
"It's a combination of speed and high executional quality and good personal interaction.
If you called CenterBeam from anywhere in the world we will answer your call within 60 seconds." On average most problems can be resolved in 10 minutes he said.
Other key factors are a high degree of automation and investment in a system called Lean Six-Sigma, which for certification requires an IT company to have a number of highly qualified technicians, called "black belts".
"If you think about driving the efficiency of a company, you want to have as little non-conformance as you can." For the aviation customer planes don't fly if computers are down. For that large hospital a faulty computer can put lives in danger.
Francis is not finished building in Saint John. He would like to expand the work force, possibly to 300 or 400.
"We've got capacity to grow (at CenterBeam Place) and we intend to do that. We are going to continue to execute and expand our businesses as aggressively as we can. And we are continuing to recruit and bringing on new people virtually every month."
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